The Girl Who Would Be Death
by LaDemonessa
Summary: Underestimating Felicity Smoak is a bad idea. A very bad idea. One-shot


The Girl Who Would Be Death

By JA Ingram

For BunneyofDoom who wanted to see badass Felicity in the Foundry.

There are some things Felicity can do and there are some things she can't.

For instance, she can't launch an arrow over some dark expanse then leap off the side of the building before it even hits its target, confident in the fact that it will bite deep enough into brick and mortar to hold her body weight. Even if she could, flinging herself across space, holding onto a thin wire, then all the rest of that stuff? No. She can't even do five sit ups without getting winded so there is no way she could do something like that; not without a lot of upper body strength training and, simply put, anything gym related was a big turn-off for her.

Unless she was there as an observer then, yeah, she could not just deal with it but she'd be willing to shell out some serious cash for season tickets.

She also couldn't do a lot of hand to hand combat stuff. She could do some; she paid attention to what her team tried to teach her, but her training had mostly concentrated on self-defense. She wasn't a fighter or a field operator. She could do a little Krav Maga, some Jujitsu, and a few other things, but going after someone? No. Going after someone head on with her fists flying would most likely end with her getting her ass handed to her *if* she was lucky.

No, there were a lot of things Felicity couldn't do that her teammates could, but there were also a lot of things she could do that they couldn't, and she didn't just mean hack. To call her 'merely' a hacker (as some people who shall remain nameless were wont to do) was both insulting and inaccurate. No, if she was anything she was a handler. She was the brains behind the brawn, the one who controlled the action from behind the curtain, and she was damn good at her job. She didn't know that was what she was in the beginning. In the beginning she was 'just' a hacker, 'just' an IT girl. She was 'just' Oliver's assistant, but then she evolved.

Evolution was not a new thing for her. Evolution came naturally to her because technology came naturally to her. It was constantly changing, evolving, so she did as well. She lived her entire life in a constant state of flux. When she was at MIT she chose to pattern herself after a comic book character named Death of the Endless. Growing up she loved comic books but Sandman had been her favorite because it was different from all the rest. It wasn't all bright colors and glossy pages, it wasn't some manga wannabe that tried to cater to guys who wanted to see big boobed 'heroines' whose job was to fill out a bra and wait for the hero to save them. It was darker, smarter, plus it later served as a kind of litmus test. If someone called her 'emo' or 'goth' then she knew they weren't worth her time. When they said something like, 'Neil Gaiman is my god!' then she knew they were worthy.

She liked the character because, despite being Death incarnate, she was always such a positive character and smart. She liked the contradiction in that, she liked the black hair and clothes that were offset by the ankh, the symbol of life. Contradiction, evolution; these were what turned her on when she was younger. They sparked her imagination.

When she met Cooper, he sparked her imagination as well. Looking back on that period of her life…well, she had a lot of regrets. She regretted ever getting involved with Cooper in the first place now, but then it was new and exciting. He made her feel powerful and special because he seemed to get her, he wanted her to use her gifts, encouraged her to tap into the chaos that had always intrigued her. He'd been her first everything in that regard; her first boyfriend, her first sexual partner, her first taste of her own inner power…and her first mistake. He was also the thing that prompted her first true evolution from the girl who would be Death, to the girl who was Life.

Felicity Smoak was what happened after she finally understood that when you play with fire, you're bound to get burned. Chaos was sexy, but it came at a steep cost; at least it did for Cooper. She thought he'd died but, in truth, he wound up in some secret government basement hacking for the NSA while slowly being driven insane. That could have been her, should have been her; instead she wound up in a cubicle at Queen Consolidated after dyeing her hair blonde and investing in a crapload of pencil skirts.

She thought she was choosing life but all she was choosing was order. Real life was far from orderly, it was messy and unpredictable. It often changed on a dime and without warning. Life in IT was 'orderly'. Work by nine, home by five; same thing day in, and day out. She kept herself busy, kept herself relatively happy, engaged in a few 'hobby hacks' now and again just to keep her mind sharp, but it wasn't enough.

Then she met Oliver Queen and…

Felicity stared at the sword in front of her and breathed out slowly.

Life got messy.

She thought she could maintain her distance, thought she could strike a balance somehow. She was never going to get this deep, she told herself.

She was so full of shit it wasn't funny.

No, she was lying to herself. She knew that from the minute the words 'Hi, I'm Oliver Queen,' first came out of that man's mouth. It had been a lie she told herself just like the one that went, 'I will not fall in love with this man because I will never make myself that vulnerable ever again.'

"That was stupid, huh?" She muttered as she drew her finger down the gleaming surface of the blade.

Because she was vulnerable, she was an open wound. She was bleeding out but no one but her knew. No one else would ever see her pain because Felicity had a skill no one knew about and that was the ability to evolve, to become the thing she needed to be to get things done.

When Oliver returned from 'death', she was ecstatic. All she heard was the rush of blood in her ears and all she could see was him; a bit pale, moving slowly, but alive. It was obvious he'd been through hell and back but, god, he was alive. She didn't even register the fact that his first thoughts had been to see his sister and not check in. Later she even admitted that was understandable. Of course he went to see Thea; she was the reason he almost sacrificed his life in the first place. No, all she was interested in was holding him tight, feeling his heartbeat for herself.

She launched herself at him, not caring how it looked. Her eyes swam with tears as he whispered in a husky, breathless tone, "I'm okay."

She didn't even care that he immediately released her, turned his back to her, addressed the other men in the room while not looking her in the eye. She was riding that high, so high that the petty details didn't matter. Even if she had noticed the distance he was keeping, it wouldn't have mattered. She loved Oliver, knew he loved her, but romance had been the furthest thing from her mind. Him just breathing was enough.

But then he said he was teaming with Malcolm Merlyn and she went cold.

Cold, then hot.

Malcolm Merlyn, the man who was at the root of every horrible thing that had happened in theit lives for the last three years, last eight for Oliver.

First he abandoned his son to become an assassin.

Then he returned to Starling with the sole intention of taking his 'revenge' on the part of the city that claimed his wife.

He seduced his best friend's wife.

He formed a cabal to bring even more crime, more drugs, more guns into the Glades.

When Robert Queen balked at his plans, he sabotaged the boat that led to his suicide and Oliver and Sara's five year descent into hell.

He blackmailed Moira Queen into going along with his plans by threatening her family, their family; Thea.

He kidnapped Walter to keep Moira in line.

He tried to kill Oliver of several occasions.

Merlyn set off an earthquake machine that took the lives of 503 men, women, and children, far less than he had planned to kill, but an unimaginable number of people nonetheless, one of them his own son.

And who were these people? Were they criminals? Thieves? Rapists? Villains? Some were, no doubt. The Glades were a slum filled with the poor and desperate and he, himself, had all but guaranteed that there would be plenty of criminals set loose on its streets. But then there were the rest of his victims, poor working families barely getting by. Children in their beds, men and women just doing the best they could with what they had, old people, young people, people who had committed no other crime except to be poor.

And after he spilled their blood, he brought even more evil down upon them by attracting the attention of Ra's al Ghul.

The Head of the Demon.

She stared at the curved, silver blade. It was homemade, roughly hammered and shaped, and ancient, but it had been sharp enough to cut through Oliver's chest and through his lung and back. It should have killed him but it didn't.

Well, it didn't take his life in any case, just his heart and soul.

"Malcolm Merlyn," Felicity said quietly as she tested the tip with her finger, "You have failed this city."

He told them he destroyed the Glades to save lives.

Whose lives? Innocent lives?

No.

No, innocent lives are what he took. He did it to save the lives of the people he thought 'mattered', the people who 'counted'. He 'saved' the lives of the elite upper class who rode out the earthquake that leveled the Glades in their fine homes across the bay in Lamb Valley, or in the Historical District in Orchid Bay. Those lives were the people he saved and, if his company gained a windfall from it, so much the better.

But he was a hero. He saved Thea from the Blood Army when Slade and his Mirakuru soldiers attacked.

True, but he also took her away, brainwashed her, turned her into a killer, then aimed her like a loaded gun at one of their own.

Sara.

Merlyn killed Sara and used Thea to do it.

He then videoed the entire thing so he could blackmail Oliver into challenging Ra's al Ghul in order to save his own neck.

After all that, after this man murdered his father, destroyed his and Sara's lives, killed 503 people including the man he loved like a brother, murdered a woman he loved, turned the sister he loved into a killer—after all that, he wanted this man to teach him how to kill Ra's al Ghul.

And he wouldn't listen to her, not when she argued every single one of those points including the one that said, if Merlyn were capable of defeating Ra's, then why didn't he just take him down himself? After all, he is a 'hero', right? Why not challenge Ra's himself?

Silence reigned after she asked that question. It wasn't the same silence he'd shown when she walked away from him saying she didn't want to be a woman he loved if this is what being that woman meant, if this gross act of betrayal is what a person he claimed to love deserved. No, this was a cold silence followed by a terse explanation.

"Because I can't trust Merlyn not to run," Oliver told her.

"But you trust him enough to bring him onto our team? You trust him with Diggle's life, Roy's life, Laurel's life?" She challenged.

"They can take care of themselves," he said after only a moment's hesitation, although he refused to look her in the eye as he said it.

"My life?" She asked him.

That made him look up, his expression angry, "Merlyn won't come near you."

"How do you know?"

"I told him to stay out of the foundry," he bit out then turned to the other members of the team who were looking on nervously. "Let's go," he ordered, turning on his heel and marching out of the lair without a second glance.

Now, as she sat in the silence they left behind, she stared at the weapon on the table in quiet contemplation. She wasn't an idiot, in fact, she was highly intelligent. She also wasn't deaf. He said all of them could take care of themselves.

Except her.

She was the weak link apparently. That was the reason he chose other women over her time and time again. Words he spoke what seemed like a lifetime ago now rang in her ears:

"Because of the life that I lead, I just think that it's better to not be with someone that I could really care about."

But that was a lie. He cared about all the women he'd been with, with the exception of Isabel, but each woman had something he thought she didn't; all of them had the ability to defend themselves. Laurel, Helena, McKenna, Sara; each and every one of them were experienced fighters, all could defend themselves with lethal force if necessary, but what could Felicity do?

More than he thought she could apparently.

She ran her finger across the blade itself and looked at the small bead of crimson that formed on the tip then allowed it to drip and pool on the silvery surface of the blade. It didn't hurt; the blade had been honed to a razor's edge so it barely stung. Besides, it was just a tiny cut that would close within seconds. She wasn't trying to hurt herself, it was merely symbolic.

Felicity was not particularly religious, but she wasn't entirely ignorant of it either.

She began to quote, "But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet and the people are not warned, and a sword comes and takes a person from them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood I will require from the watchman's hand."

She looked at the blood on her finger dry-eyed and unflinchingly, "Now as for you, son of man, I have appointed you a watchman for the house of Israel; so you will hear a message from My mouth and give them warning from Me."

She thought of Merlyn.

Malcolm Merlyn had come into the foundry, into her *home*.

He came into her home to deliver her this sword and sneer at her pain.

Ra's al Ghul thought he killed Oliver knowing he was innocent.

He took the life of a good man because he could, because of some so-called 'honor' that was really just bullshit built on lies. He should have killed Malcolm instead, but he didn't. He was as much a 'hero' as Merlyn was. They weren't 'saving' lives, they were just trying to put a positive spin on mass murder just like every other sadistic bastard throughout history had done: Adolf Hitler, Leopold II of Belgium, Jean Kambanda, Josef Stalin, Hideki Tojo, Pol Pot, Osama Bin Laden…

Ra's al Ghul and Malcolm Merlyn.

"When I say to the wicked, 'O wicked man, you will surely die,' and you do not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require from your hand."

There were a lot of things Felicity Smoak couldn't do, and there were a lot of things she could. She tried being Death, she tried being Life. She tried her hand at balancing chaos and order and failed miserably. Now it was time to evolve again.

She began to trace letters on the sword as she cleared her mind and brought all of her skills to bear.

They thought she was weak because she couldn't lift a sword or pummel a man to death with her fists, but she had the ability to shut down an entire city with a keystroke.

They thought she wasn't a threat because they almost killed the man she loved, a man who, himself, refused to be with her because he thought she couldn't defend herself, but none of them, not even Oliver, took into account the fact that she was the one who saved him time and time again.

They looked into her eyes and sneered at her finely boned features and delicate hands but those hands could find them wherever they hid. They could access any system, hack any database. She could take over the world with those hands.

They saw her glasses and assumed she was defective in her vision but she could see everything clearly through those lenses. Her eyes were everywhere; she knew all, she saw all.

"Oracle," she said quietly as her blood began to dry on the once shiny surface of the sword.

It was time to evolve again.


End file.
